Providers of digital video content, audio content or other types of content often are reluctant to deliver this content over the Internet without effective content protection. While the technology exists for content providers to provide content over the Internet, digital content by its very nature is easy to duplicate either with or without the owner's authorization. The Internet allows the delivery of the content from the owner, but that same technology also permits widespread distribution of unauthorized, duplicated content.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a digital content protection model that has grown in use in recent years as a means for protecting file distribution. DRM usually encompasses a complex set of technologies and business models to protect digital media or other data and to provide revenue to content owners.
Many known DRM systems use a storage device, such as a hard disk drive component of a computer, that contains a collection of unencrypted content (or other data) provided by content owners. The content in the storage device resides within a trusted area behind a firewall. Within the trusted area, the content residing on the storage device can be encrypted. A content server receives encrypted content from the storage device and packages the encrypted content for distribution. A license server holds a description of rights and usage rules associated with the encrypted content, as well as associated encryption keys. (The content server and license server are sometimes part of a content provider system that is owned or controlled by a content provider (such as a studio) or by a service provider.) A playback device or client receives the encrypted content from the content server for display and receives a license specifying access rights from the license server.
Some DRM processes consist of requesting an item of content, encrypting the item with a content key, storing the content key in a content digital license, distributing the encrypted content to a playback device, delivering a digital license file that includes the content key to the playback device, and decrypting the content file and playing it under the usage rules specified in the digital license.
However, as more and more content is delivered to end-users, such known DRM schemes can place a burden on the servers of the content or service providers. For each request for a particular item of content by each user, the servers are required to create a “package,” including the generation of decryption keys, the generation of a content license, and the encryption of the content itself.
For distributions that involve a subscription model of business, more and more burdens can be placed on content provider servers using known DRM schemes wherein each item of content is “packaged” for the subscriber. If the user pays for one license in advance for a subscription of content, scenarios may develop whereby the content that is accessible to the user builds up over time and may exceed that which was paid for.
Thus an improved method and system of protection mechanisms are desirable to accomplish delivery of protected data or media.